Latest revision as of 16:16, 3 July 2013

NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE CURRENT VERSION

Please visit the OWASP Top 10 project page to find the latest edition.

Welcome to the OWASP Top Ten 2004

The OWASP Top Ten provides a powerful awareness document for web application security. The OWASP Top Ten represents a broad consensus about what the most critical web application security flaws are. Project members include a variety of security experts from around the world who have shared their expertise to produce this list. There are currently versions in English, French, Japanese, and Korean. A Spanish version is in the works. We urge all companies to adopt this awareness document within their organization and start the process of ensuring that their web applications do not contain these flaws. Adopting the OWASP Top Ten is perhaps the most effective first step towards changing the software development culture within your organization into one that produces secure code.

Restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do are not properly enforced. Attackers can exploit these flaws to access other users' accounts, view sensitive files, or use unauthorized functions.

Account credentials and session tokens are not properly protected. Attackers that can compromise passwords, keys, session cookies, or other tokens can defeat authentication restrictions and assume other users' identities.

The web application can be used as a mechanism to transport an attack to an end user's browser. A successful attack can disclose the end user?s session token, attack the local machine, or spoof content to fool the user.

Web application components in some languages that do not properly validate input can be crashed and, in some cases, used to take control of a process. These components can include CGI, libraries, drivers, and web application server components.

Web applications pass parameters when they access external systems or the local operating system. If an attacker can embed malicious commands in these parameters, the external system may execute those commands on behalf of the web application.

Error conditions that occur during normal operation are not handled properly. If an attacker can cause errors to occur that the web application does not handle, they can gain detailed system information, deny service, cause security mechanisms to fail, or crash the server.

Web applications frequently use cryptographic functions to protect information and credentials. These functions and the code to integrate them have proven difficult to code properly, frequently resulting in weak protection.

Attackers can consume web application resources to a point where other legitimate users can no longer access or use the application. Attackers can also lock users out of their accounts or even cause the entire application to fail.

Users and Adopters

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission strongly recommends that all companies use the OWASP Top Ten and ensure that their partners do the same. In addition, the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency has listed the OWASP Top Ten as key best practices that should be used as part of the DOD Information Technology Security Certification and Accreditation (C&A) Process (DITSCAP).

In the commercial market, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standard has adopted the OWASP Top Ten, and requires (among other things) that all merchants get a security code review for all their custom code. In addition, a broad range of companies and agencies around the globe are also using the OWASP Top Ten, including:

A.G. Edwards

Bank of Newport

Best Software

British Telecom

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF)

Cboss Internet

Cognizant

Contra Costa County, CA

Corillian Corporation

Foundstone Strategic Security

IBM Global Services

National Australia Bank

Norfolk Southern

Online Business Systems

Predictive Systems

Price Waterhouse Coopers

Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI)

SSP Solutions

Samsung SDS (Korea)

Sempra Energy

Sprint

Sun Microsystems

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

Texas Dept of Human Services

Zapatec

ZipForm

...and many others

Several schools have also adopted the OWASP Top Ten as a part of their curriculum, including Michigan State University (MSU), and the University of California at San Diego (UCSD).

Several open source projects have adopted the OWASP Top Ten as part of their security audits, including: